Reduced Forms of English
Words

This item is a version of a lecture given on a number of occasions to the annual Summer Course
in English Phonetics at University College London.

1. English-speakers, more than the
speakers of most other languages, tend to give great weight to
important syllables and much of the time to treat relatively neglectfully the
less important syllables of words. This custom has very notable effects
on the changes of form which words undergo in English. The kinds of
process that bring about these frequent alterations to the shapes of
words can be summarised under the headings of assimilation (including
coalescence), elision, compression and liaison /li`eɪzn/.

2. Uttered entirely alone, words
take
their "citation" or "lexical" forms as shown in dictionaries, but the
majority of the most commonly used English words frequently change in
form (losing and/or changing phonemes) as they undergo reduced
articulations. These reductions are mainly the results of pressures
exerted by the process of rhythmically integrating groups of words
which the speaker wishes to convey to be unified grammatical entities.

3. Fortunately, only a tiny
fraction of
these reduced forms of words need regularly be adopted by EFL users.
Only forty-odd words are the exceptions which constitute this fraction.
These are dealt with under "Weakform Words & Contractions" elsewhere on
this Website. Let's look briefly at each of the categories we listed
above .

4. Assimilation (ie alteration
of an original sound by the influence of an adjacent one: the term was recorded as
applied to consonants in OED from 1871) is a topic that the ordinary
EFL user needn't much worry about because practically all the
assimilations that arise in continuous speech are "optional". That is
to say, among native speakers they are very frequent but sporadic
rather than invariable. Perhaps the most regularly occurring types are
from / s / or / z / to / ∫ / or
/ ʒ
/ as in apprenticeship /ə`prentɪʃʃɪp/, bus-shelter / `bʌʃ
ʃeltə /, dress shop /`dreʃ ʃɒp/, ice-show /`aɪʃ ʃəʊ/, less sure /'leʃ `ʃɔː/, MissJones /mɪʃ `ʤəʊnz/, S-shaped /`eʃ ʃeɪpt/ and has she / `hæʒ ʃi /etc. The only
important thing for the EFL user to remember is not to artificially
slow down articulation and thus spoil the fluency of an utterance in
order to produce for example an unchanged /z/ in is she, or /s/ in horse shoe / `hɔːʃ ʃuː/ or
`tortoise-shell /`tɔːtəʃ ʃel /. With fluent rhythm the articulation can
usually be left to take care of itself.

Certain assimilations involve
coalescence, notably of /t/ and
/d/ with following /j/ as in did you
uttered as / `dɪʤu /.
Sometimes Tuesday is
represented (usually by
sneering writers) as uttered by some speakers as Chewsday and dew as Jew,
etc. Expression of disapproval
of such usages is now very old-fashioned. EFL users should feel free
to adopt these coalescent forms if they find them more comfortable to
use.

5. One of the very small number of
assimilations that it would sound abnormal not to make is the
sharpening to / s / of the s
of used to when it means
accustomed to. The verb use
has / z / for its s in
all
other circumstances. The same sort of thing often happens to supposed to but it won't sound
strange if you don't sharpen the s there
nor sharpen the traditional /v/ to / f / in have to or of course or the /z/ to /s/ in hasto – though a great many speakers
do make those assimilations very frequently.

6. You may be surprised to see
that dictionaries show as the usual forms for gooseberry, raspberry, fivepence, newspaper
/ `gʊzbri, `rɑːzbri, `faɪfpəns, `njuːspeɪpə / but these pronunciations
are not continuous-speech adaptations, just simply common invariable
forms for most speakers. (In Northern England one finds in some cases
differences from General
British in such items.)

7. The outstanding thing that
makes
assimilation a notable EFL topic is the strong tendency for speakers of
Dutch, French, Greek and various Slavonic and African languages to
soften a sharp consonant at the end of a word followed by another
beginning with a soft consonant. Such people tend to produce versions
which suggest the spellings bag
`door, `baizeball, `buzz route, `eyesberg, `Jews' bottle, `wodgeman,`rizzwatch, robe `ladder, rose `beef
and on `whore's back for back `door, `baseball, `bus route,
`iceberg, `juice bottle, `watchman, `wristwatch, rope `ladder, roast
`beef and on `horseback.

8. The reverse of this is done by some
eg Dutch speakers. They may seem to be saying dretful, fock patches or flackpoles when they are aiming to
say the English words dreadful, fog
patches or flagpoles.
Yorkshire people are the only ones in the English-speaking world with
this tendency: eg they (including in his day the well-known author
J. B. Priestley) tend to pronounce Bradford
as Bratford, actually usually
[`bræʔfəd]. Many EFL
users
tend to produce yet other types of assimilations that sound very
abnormal such as I'd love onewith a /v/ instead
of the normal / w / beginning the word /wʌn/.

9. Elision (the omission of a
speech sound; linguistic use noted by OED from 1581) is likewise
(weakform words aside) not an important topic for the EFL user — with
some very minor exceptions. Expressions like `breaststroke, first `stop, masked `ball,
next `time naturally tend to lose the final / t / of the
first word. Any obvious slowing down of the natural appropriate rate of
utterance in order to manage to produce such a / t / is best avoided.
Even what might be written good
`eel, take `air, pry `minister and extra `tension for good `deal, take `care, prime `minister
and extra at`tention are
commonplace native-speaker variants.

10. It is now, despite the
impression
given by many dictionaries, quite unusual to make four syllables of the
many common ultimately Latin-derived adverbs like actually, generally, obviously, usually etc
or even to to make temporarily
different from temporally, though in this word many British speakers now postpone the main stress
saying /tempə`rerəli/ as Americans generally do.

11. English speakers generally do
not
elide the final plosive of a word which is closely followed by another
word that begins with an obstruent (ie a plosive, affricate or
fricative) or nasal consonant but they do not release it. If one does
release such a plosive, the unfortunate result is strikingly unnatural
in pronunciations like take care
with the first /k/ released and
postman, windmill or grandfather similarly produced. These sound too much like take a care, posterman, windowmill and grander father.

12 One needs to be constantly on
guard
against being misled by our very archaic spelling into restoring any of
the very numerous historical elisions which are to be seen in words
such as blackguard / `blægɑːd
/, Christmas / `krɪsməs /, cupboard /
`kʌbəd /, evening / `iːvnɪŋ
/, several / `sevrl / soften / `sɒfn / etc
(contrast often which has a
very common spelling-influenced pronunciation with its former / t / restored ).
One now even
hears an / l / in calm
from a very small minority of English people as one can from many Americans.
EFL
users should also be careful not to elide the second element of the
English affricates / ʧ / and / ʤ / which would produce outlandish
expressions sounding like what one might write as villid `church, 8 G
`Wells and `what chain
rather than village `church,
H. G.`Wells and `watch chain.

13. It's necessary also to avoid
simplifying awkward consonant sequences in ways that English speakers
don't adopt. For example, for months
/ mʌnθ / is quite unacceptably abnormal whereas omitting the /
θ / to give / mʌns / is
perfectly
alright. Fifths and twelfths tend to contain
co-articulatory blendings of two or more consonants produced
simultaneously by native English speakers. LPD includes the versions /
fɪθs / and / twelθs / which it records (one may be confident from the refraining from
adverse comment) as unremarkable and must be far safer for the EFL
speaker to adopt than to attempt a triple or quadruple consonant
ending. With the form / sɪks / for sixths
LPD is less tolerant labelling it as "casual" possibly bowing to
the
many who would profess to be shocked if a teacher were found to be
recommending a pronunciation which failed to distinguish sixths from six.
Something which most GB
speakers and many Americans had come to accept very widely by the end
of the twentieth century was the reduction in any word of final / -sts
/ to simply /-st /. Such versions now constantly pass unnoticed even in
isolated words, though the dictionaries and textbooks are being very
slow getting round to acknowledging this so widespread failure to
differentiate singular and
plural in such words.

14. Compression (first proposed as
a institutionalised linguistic term in Windsor Lewis 1969 A Guide to English Pronunciation)
is the reduction of articulatory movement typically resulting in
elimination of a syllable as when / `reɪdiəʊ / becomes /`reɪdjəʊ/ or /
`fɒləʊɪŋ / becomes / `fɒlwɪŋ /. This can also largely be disregarded by
the EFL user. However, it is desirable to have the normally reduced
versions not making three clear syllables of
closing-diphthong-plus-schwa when an unstressed syllable follows as in
words like fireman and powerful or they may well sound
over-carefully enunciated. Similarly words like empire and `rush hour won't sound natural if uttered as three syllables. Most word-internal syllabic
consonants as in eg fattening
or settler or civilisation are constantly
compressed into unsyllabic ones. Note the compression loops used in the
LPD (the Longman Pronunciation
Dictionary) eg between the / l / and the final schwa at settler /set ̬lə/ to convey
this
alternation and the useful account in LPD of the phenomenon at
its
alphabetical entry "compression". Younger speakers are currently
increasingly tending to avoid such "de-syllabications". In extremes not
recommendable for imitation they may introduce schwas which can sound pedantic or fussy and where some have
probably never before existed eg in accidentally, amply, assembly,
trembling, fattening, maddening, handling, spindly, wobbling etc.

15. Liaison (in OED as an
institutionalised linguistic term first recorded in 1884; "linking r"
is not
noted by the OED before 1950 but Daniel Jones introduced its use in the 1920s; it
seems to have appeared first in print in Ida Ward's Phoneticsof English in 1929). This
phenomenon is the linking to a following word of a preceding one by
employment of a final sound not present in the isolate form of the
first word. It's found in English when a word ending in a non-close
vocalic sound, / ɑː, ɔː, ɜː/ or a schwa [ə], is closely followed by a
word beginning with any vocalic sound (ie vowel or diphthong). Most
such words have a final -r (or
-re) in their spelling; if
not, the / r / used is often labelled 'intrusive' and is sometimes
criticised by purists (ie people who set themselves up as arbiters of
how other people should speak), even when its use is virtually
universal as in the phrase the idea /
r / of it.

16. Omission of linking / r / is
in
many cases quite "optional" but its absence from common expressions
usually uttered with close rhythmic integration can sound quite
strange. So EFL users are best advised to cultivate it in eg phrases
such as our own, or else, better and
better, later on, far off, other end, pair of etc. The purists
like to complain that people say Laura
Norder instead of law and
order. Note also the jokey mock book-title "Dog's Delight by Nora Bone" (gnaw / r / a bone). But huge numbers of
people of unimpeachable education say such things and evenalso draw/r/ing and I saw / r / it without noticing
that they're doing so and without being noticed as doing so by the
great majority of other speakers. These last two types need not be particularly cultivated by EFL users.